Reading GGGTM

Chapter five and entry seven

Something in the room felt off, like the air itself was too thick to reathe. In all her years of knowing Naomi, it had never been like this.

"What happened?" Sal asked.

"She was just interviewing me."

Pip gave Naomi a reassuring smile and made a passing  joke about the amount of dog hair attached to her own leggings. Naomi smiled weakly, twisting the ends of her tawny hair.

They were sitting in Mr. Ward's study: Pip on the swiveling desk chair, and Naomi across from her in a red leather recliner. Naomi wasn't looking at Pip; she was staring instead at the three paintings on the far wall. Three giant rainbow-colored canvases of the family: her parents walking in the autumn woods; her dad, Elliot, drinking from a steaming mug; and a young Naomi and Cara on a swing. Their mom had painted them when she was dying, her final mark upon the world. Pip knew how important those paintings were to the Wards, how the family looked to them in their happiest and saddest times. Although she remembered there used to be a couple more displayed in here too. Maybe Mr. Ward was keeping them in storage to give to the girls when they grew up and moved out.

Cara and Naomi glared at the wall behind Andie, now that they knew what she'd done to their mom's painting, well they couldn't forgive her for that.

Pip knew Naomi had been going to therapy since her mom died seven years ago. And that she had managed to wade through her anxiety, neck just above the water, to graduate from college.

But a few months ago, she'd had a panic attack at Manhattan and quit to move back in with her dad and sister.

Naomi was fragile, and Pip was trying her hardest not to rig on any cracks. From the corner of her eye she could see the time scrolling on her voice recorder app.

"So, can you tell me what you were all doing at Max's that night?" she asked gently.

Naomi shifted, eyes moving down to circle her knees. "Um, we were just, like, drinking, talking, playing some Xbox.
nothing too exciting."

"And taking pictures? Theres a lew on Facebook from that night."

"Yeah, taking silly pictures. Just messing around, really," Naomi said.

"There aren't any pictures of Sal from that night, though."

Sal frowned, why did they post those without him but not the ones with him. He wondered about that and why they took away his alibi. He'd never asked them to make one up in the first place, but he had died before he'd gotten answers.

"No, well, I guess he left before we started taking them."

"And was Sal acting strangely before he left?" said Pip.

"Um, I... No, I don't think he was really."

"Did he talk about Andie at all?"

"I, um... Yeah, maybe a bit." Naomi shifted in her seat.

"What did he say about her?" Pip asked.

"Um." Naomi paused for a moment, picking at a ripped cuticle by her thumb. "He, um . .. I think maybe they were having a disagreement. Sal said he wasn't going to talk to her for a bit."

"Why?"

"I don't remember specifically. But Andie was ... She was kind of a nightmare. She was always trying to pick fights with Sal over the smallest things. Sal preferred to give her the silent treatment rather than argue."

"I am not a nightmare."

"Yeah you are." Nat said, "The others can agree."

"Well?" Andie demanded.